Senior Project Manager, Research

About Xaira Therapeutics

Xaira is an innovative biotech startup focused on leveraging AI to transform drug discovery and development. The company is leading the development of generative AI models to design protein and antibody therapeutics, enabling the creation of medicines against historically hard-to-drug molecular targets. It is also developing foundation models for biology and disease to enable better target elucidation and patient stratification. Collectively, these technologies aim to continually enable the identification of novel therapies and to improve success in drug development. Xaira is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and London.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Project Manager, Research, to support high-priority programs in our research organization. This role is well-suited for a candidate with a strong scientific and software background who has experience with cross-functional project management responsibilities within research settings. The ideal candidate will have hands-on experience in ML model training, software development, and biologics R&D with the ability to manage timelines, track deliverables, and partner closely with scientific leads to keep projects moving in the right direction without compromising on quality.

This position emphasizes scientific depth, coordination across cross-functional teams, and milestone tracking, making it a strong fit for someone with a technical background at the interface of machine learning and biology, with a preference for cross-functional projects.

Key Responsibilities

• Project Planning and Execution
  • Support day-to-day planning and coordination of platform research programs, ensuring clear communication of next steps, expected deadlines, and needs to stakeholders.
  • Build and maintain project timelines that capture critical milestones, dependencies, and deliverables.
  • Partner with scientific leads and functional stakeholders to align on scope, priorities, and progress.
    
    
• Milestone Management & Decision Support
  • Collaborate with scientific teams to define key project milestones, decisional experiments and translate into actionable, resource-information timelines.
  • Help compile project data, timelines, risks, and trade-offs to support informed decision- making.
  • Coordinate and facilitate planning and documentation of decisive experiments, and update project plans based on results and next steps.
    
    
• Cross-Functional Project Coordination
  • Facilitate cross-functional collaboration across research to ensure effective communication and documentation of decisions, alignment of priorities  and timelines.
  • Schedule and run cross-functional meetings, ensuring clear agendas, effective documentation, and follow-up on action items.
  • Monitor interdependencies across functions and proactively identify, flag and resolve conflicts across workstreams.
    
    
• Operational Support & Project Monitoring
  • Track project status, risks, and mitigation strategies; provide updates to internal stakeholders.
  • Coordinate with functional leads to understand resource needs and potential impacts to timelines.
  • Contribute to scenario planning and contingency thinking for critical path activities
  • Identify operational challenges and recommend improvements to enhance efficiency and coordination.
• Resource Coordination & Timeline Scenarios
  • Work closely with functional and team leads to understand resourcing needs, identify gaps and timeline impacts.
  • Develop scenario plans for critical path development decisions to support contingency and investment planning to address potential delays, bottlenecks, or shifts in scope.

Qualifications

• Advanced degree (MS, PhD, or equivalent) in life sciences or a related field strongly preferred.
• Minimum of 6+ years of industry experience, including hands-on biologics research with demonstrated project or timeline management responsibilities.
• Proven track record of managing research programs, both in wet-lab and dry-lab.
• Deep understanding of processes in biologics research and ML research.
• Strong analytical, planning, and organizational skills; able to translate complex scientific ideas into clear plans.
• Excellent communication, time management collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience with basic project tracking tools; advanced PM certifications or software expertise preferred but not required
• Please note that this position will be req